


Figuratively, Born Yesterday

by TheColorBlue



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, I blame Bioshock for the shooting gallery, Multi, Multiplicity/Plurality, POV First Person, Sora will never go into politics, references to Adventure Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>These days, Sora entertains notions everywhere from growing up to be an astronaut, to a fireman, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtdVGm5uP-0">to a future president</a>. I’ve told him that the only thing he’ll ever be a president of is the moon, and of course all he does is kind of laugh it off. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Figuratively, Born Yesterday

If you’ve ever seen the cartoon _Adventure Time_ , you’ll know exactly what my brother, Sora, is like. He’s Finn the Human. He’s the hero with the heart of gold. Minus the weirdness of that show, he’s like—pretty much the most chivalrous person you’ll ever meet, if knighthood was an actual profession, you can bet that we’d have signed up by now. As it is, these days he entertains notions everywhere from growing up to be an astronaut, to a fireman, to a future president. 

I’ve told him that the only thing he’ll ever be a president of is the moon, and of course all he does is kind of laugh it off. 

Actually, Sora would probably never go into politics. We’re sixteen-years-old, but we watch the news, and God, it’s depressing. Even a comedy news-show like Colbert can be enough for me to, figuratively, want to throw the laptop out the window, and Sora gets sort of morose, and then we go volunteer at the animal shelter again so that we can be showered in the love of puppies and kittens. 

Well, not always tiny puppies and kittens. 

Last week, someone left a pair of Great Pyreness at the shelter, and it’s like trying to walk small ponies. I let Sora do all the heavy-lifting, and it’s hilarious. They’re huge, and sweet, but half the time it’s pretty much them herding Sora around, instead of the other way. 

\--

I wasn’t born yesterday, but sometimes it feels like it. 

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but I pretty much mean what I say, too. 

Axel—and he can be such an asshole, I can’t even—but he gets such a laugh out of trying to figure out things I missed, not-growing-up. My memories stop at five, and start again at sixteen. There’s piles of movies I’ve never seen, and television, and music, and celebrities I don’t recognize, and Axel let’s his eyes get dramatically huge, and he makes me watch terrible movies with him. He doesn’t even care that I complain through half of them, he talks too, and chews popcorn with his mouth open. He chews really loudly at me, and grins when I complain about that. 

It’s fun, in a weird way. 

He and Riku don’t exactly get along. 

I’ve theorized that it’s because they both think so highly of themselves, it’s hard for the two of them to sit together in one place, and Sora usually pulls _that face_ of his when I suggest it, so I shut up. I’m still thinking it, though, and I can tell that Sora can tell I’m thinking it, but all he usually ever suggests then is something inane, like going to get ice cream. 

Kairi and Namine usually try to arrange group activities. Last month, it was all of us going to that new rolling sushi bar downtown. Riku and Axel kept competing over the little boats of dishes that sailed past on their little conveyer belts. 

Sometimes I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, honestly. Kairi’s pretty much Sora’s girlfriend, and Namine is basically mine, but then saying that Axel and Riku are third wheels would be like saying—well, Sora would say it better, he’d say it’s like saying that any member of the Three Musketeers was a third wheel, and cheesy as that sounds, he hits that one dead center, pretty much. And then there are the boatloads of other people we know, between Sora being involved in every social extracurricular known to man, and me having my mates in the local mixed martial arts school. 

It’s pretty crazy, and tiring, but Axel is always saying that if I “go back to sleep” the way I went to sleep between five and sixteen, I guess, Axel would beat me up until I came out again, what a jerk I’d be. 

I don’t point out that he’d be beating Sora up, not me. I get what Axel is trying to say. He can be kind of an asshole, but he’s my friend too, and sometimes I don’t even mind when he makes those stupid jokes, like I’m some kind of time-traveling Sleeping Beauty, and that’s why he’s now responsible for educating me on the finer points of popular culture. 

\--

It really can be tiring though, honestly, so sometimes it’s just me and Sora, and we go for walks on the beach. It’s nice. Even Sora likes it, for all of his usual social outgoingness. 

Sora chases seagulls, or digs holes in the sand and watches the tide come in and wash them out. I stick our toes in the water, and then we paddle out into the sea, and then back. We dry off and put our shirt back on. We hang out on the pier and watch people jogging past, or tourists, or local kids skateboarding. 

There’s a lot of people we hang out with, but at the end of the day, honestly, it boils down to him and me. I think about it a lot, and I know it could have been awful. What if we hated each other. I think about that a lot. _What if we had hated each other_. But Sora pretty much seems incapable of hating anyone, so I guess I’m… I guess I’m lucky is what I what I nearly want to say, but that doesn’t seem quite right either. 

Back when I first woke up, I guess, there was a psychiatrist or something we were seeing on the mainland, Dr. Ansem, and he was always asking Sora how he was doing. Sora always said that he was doing great. I think he was, in a way, but at the same time I also know he was… I don’t know if depressed was the right word, but he’d been getting into fights with Riku lately, and even things with Kairi and Namine were shaky for a while. My point is, he lied. And Dr. Ansem would scribble things down, and saying that, at his age, it was normal to want to try out different senses of identity, trying to be someone else every once in a while. All of “this”—and by “this” he meant “me”—could be a response to distress or a difficult period while growing up. 

We didn’t see him for very long. 

I could say that I’m still angry about all of that, but I don’t know. I mean, different professionals are going to have different opinions about this kind of thing, and Dr. Ansem isn’t the only guy working on the mainland, and we’re not the only people with…more than one person being carried around in the same head, around here. It’s not like I was _scarred for life_ by the whole episode, so, you know. 

The way it all turned out though, maybe it was just me waking up at the right time. Maybe it was because, back in the beginning, all I really was doing was stuffing our face with ice cream, and sleeping, and…Axel kept flirting with me, for some reason, when we went out, which really pissed Riku off….Maybe it was because Kairi and Namine have been around since forever, so Sora had a pretty open-mind about all of this, compared to some people. 

I don’t know. 

Honestly, aside from therapists and weirdness like that, sometimes I think what really gets me mad is that I feel like a…hanger-oner, next to Sora. He’s been around since forever. I’m just some guy. Sora could grow up to be a fireman or a teacher or maybe a professional dog-walker, but whatever it would be, I know he’s going to be a sterling specimen of one, a model citizen or whatever. 

I’m just some guy, and it’s so stupid, but these days, when I think about it, it pisses me off. 

\--

 _Anyway,_ we’re still at the beach, I can tell my emotions are leaking over, because now Sora’s figuratively patting me on the back, while we watch the seagulls, and he says: _you know, we’re only sixteen-year-old’s_. 

I’m probably glaring at the sunset all while he’s talking. 

_It’s only high school. I mean. That dumb time in a guy’s life_.

 _Yeah, I guess,_ is what I say, but you know, it doesn’t exactly make things easier. 

I scrub a hand through our hair, thinking about it. 

Then I take us down to the old shooting gallery on the pier, because maybe might actually make us feel better. Or just me, but I know that Sora likes it too. Shooting cork bullets at rolling plywood models; nothing better for taking the edge off. 

Sora talking about age does remind me of one of Axel's stupid jokes about my being technically six-years-old. 

Stupid everybody, I'm thinking, but at least I'm feeling slightly less intolerably angry about it all, as I load the cork bullets up, and take aim at the first target.


End file.
